Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

by Мэтью Квик Q

  “What?”

  “After listening to all of your weird, endless questions, I don’t think you really believe in prayer, Leonard.” Her voice was harsh, and reminded me of Linda’s when she’s “reached the end of her rope”[50] with me, like she’s always saying.

  “I’m going through some rough stuff I haven’t told anyone about and it would really help if I thought you were praying for me,” I said. “You can even lie if you want, but if you’d just say you’d continue to pray for me, I think I might be able to make it through this bad stuff, because at least I’d know one person was pulling for me in her own special way.”

  Lauren looked at me like she thought I might be tricking her, but then—without making the femme-fatale cat face—she said, “Okay. I’ll pray for you. Every day. And I don’t lie. Ever.”

  I smiled and walked away quickly before she could change her mind or say anything else that would convince me of her insincerity.

  Thinking about Lauren praying for me every day helped a lot at first; it really did.

  But then after a few days, it stopped working—I know because I started to feel like I really wanted to kill Asher Beal again—which made me wonder if she had quit praying, and then as my desire to kill amplified, I convinced myself she definitely had.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Just like I’d hoped, after school today, when I arrive at our town’s subway station, I find Lauren handing out tracts, or rather holding the tracts out to everyone who passes by and doesn’t say a word to her or even give her a glance.

  I wonder what crazy bit of propaganda she’s peddling today and what scary pictures are inside—hell flames and bloody saviors and all sorts of Christian gore.

  I didn’t come here to mess with Lauren’s head or argue with her about religion or logic or ask for favors or anything else.

  I just came to say good-bye.

  Lauren’s cut her hair into bangs that hang out under the home-knit beret-type hat she’s got on. A little curtain of blond shields her forehead. The hat’s so homely and old-ladyish that it makes me crush on[51] Lauren again so much—even if she did stop praying for me.

  It’s like she’s not even aware that she’s so horribly out of fashion. She’s not wearing the hat in any ironic way, like some of the black-nail-polish girls in my high school would. And Lauren’s also got on this off-white jacket that goes down to her knees and from far away makes her look like she’s wearing a robe—like the stereotypical angel a child would draw.

  God, she looks perfect.

  And no one is paying her any attention but me.

  Since I’ve been watching her, I’d say at least thirty people have passed and she’s extended her mitten-clutched pamphlet to every single one and yet no one has even glanced at her.

  I still think the idea of god is bullshit, obviously, but I have to tell you, the one thing I admire about Lauren is that she’s not out here because she wants to be right or righteous or make people feel bad about what they already believe; she’s not really interested in arguing with anyone or anything like that—and I’ll admit that maybe subconsciously she needs to prove that her ideas are more important than the ideas of others, but she also really worries that everyone is literally going to burn in hell forever and ever and she doesn’t want that to happen to anyone at all. It’s like she’s living in a fairy tale and she’s desperately trying to keep the big bad wolf from devouring us or blowing down our houses. I love her for at least caring about strangers—for at least trying to save people, even if the threat she perceives isn’t real.

  When I approach her, she doesn’t see me at first.

  “Excuse me, miss,” I say, trying to do Bogart again. “You wouldn’t be able to tell me how to make Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, would you? Because I’ve been—”

  “Stop making fun of me, please, Leonard,” she says as five suits pass by her outstretched hand without taking a tract.

  “How many people have you saved today?” I ask just to make conversation.

  “Why is there no hair hanging down from inside that hat?” she says, which makes me smile, because she noticed I cut it off.

  “Got in a fight with some scissors. Have you been praying for me like you said you would?”

  “Every day,” she says in a way that makes me believe her.

  It’s depressing, because if she is telling the truth—considering what I’m about to do—it means prayer doesn’t work after all.

  “You know, I saw this show on TV and it was all about how maybe aliens came to Earth thousands of years ago and gave humans information that we weren’t yet ready to fathom—like space travel—and so we maybe made religion out of those ideas, like metaphors to explain what the aliens had told us. Jesus ascending into the heavens. Promising to return again. That sounds like space travel, right?”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Well, they suggested that prayer was a form of trying to communicate with these aliens. And they said that Indians wore feathers and kings wore crowns as antennas, sort of.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Just because I want to do something nice before I kill Asher Beal and off myself, I say, “Well, the important thing is that they kept discussing the universality of prayer all over the world and even used scientific instruments to measure the energy that many people praying together creates, suggesting that prayer can be scientifically detected, that it actually changes our surroundings by manipulating electrons or something, and maybe it even helps—regardless of whether we’re really communicating with someone, be it a god or aliens or even if we are just meditating. Praying helps, or at least that’s what the show suggested. The power of prayer may be real.”

  “It IS real,” she says, and starts to turn red. She really looks pissed off. “God hears all of our prayers. Prayer is very powerful.”

  “I know. I know,” I say, realizing that she has no idea what I’m talking about and, worse yet, she won’t allow herself to even consider what I’m saying, because it would ruin the illusions she has to cling to if she is to get through her six mandatory weekly unsuccessful hours of trying to convert subway riders to Christianity.

  “Can I ask you a question, Lauren?”

  She doesn’t answer, but manages to get this mom-looking woman to take a tract. Lauren says “Jesus loves you” to the woman.

  “Forget about all the aliens stuff, okay? What I really want to know before I go and never see you again is this—”

  “Where are you going?”

  I don’t want to tell her that I’m going to kill Asher Beal and myself because it will make her worry about me ending up in hell—which is a real place to her—so I say, “I don’t know why I said that. I’m just being stupid, but I wanted to ask you—”

  She says “Jesus loves you” to another stranger.

  “Do you think that maybe if I were a Christian—like maybe if I were born into a family like yours and was homeschooled and forced to believe that—”

  “I’m not forced to believe anything. I believe of my own free will.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But the point I’m trying to make is that if I were more like you, if I believed in god like you do, do you think that maybe you and I could have dated and maybe gotten married and had babies and lived a happily-ever-after sort of life?”

  She looks at me like she’s trying to make a decision, and then she says, “You could have that sort of life if you ask God for it. If you give your life to God, He will provide for you in marvelous ways. He promises us that. If He takes care of the sparrows, how much more will He take care of us?”

  There are a million arguments I could use against her right now, because not everyone who believes in god gets to live in suburbia and have first-world problems like Baback says, and if believing in god could really solve all of my problems and make me feel better, I would definitely do that pronto—everyone would, right?

  But I’m not really interested in debunking her theology ri
ght now. I’m much more interested in the fact that Lauren’s never been kissed and that I might die without kissing her.

  “Just pretend I’m a Christian like you. For argument’s sake. Theoretically. Could we have ended up married and living a regular life? Like maybe in an alternate universe?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  She looks really confused and like she might actually run away from me, so I drop it and say, “I bought you a present,” and start to open my backpack.

  “Why did you buy me a present?”

  “This may seem weird, but I feel like god told me to buy you this present.” I’m completely lying, but I manage to say it with a serious old-school Hollywood face and I can tell she buys it, mostly because she wants to buy it. “He spoke to me. Told me you had been praying hard. And so he wanted me to give you a sign today.”

  Her lips are parted just a little. She doesn’t wear any makeup ever, so she looks natural right now, which I love.

  Her breath is slipping in and out of her like a soul yo-yo.

  I hand her the little pink box.

  “I don’t know that I can accept a present from you, Leonard,” she says, but she’s also staring at the box like she really wants to know what’s inside.

  “It’s from god,” I say. “So it’s okay.”

  She sucks her lips in between her teeth and then her mittens come off and she’s unwrapping the paper, which makes me so so so happy.

  Lauren lifts off the lid and pulls out the silver cross on the silver chain.

  “I know how much you love Christianity, so I found this on the Internet. It’s simple enough to go with your style, but—”

  She clamps it on around her neck, holds the cross in front of her nose, and gives it a good stare before tucking it into her shirt. Then she smiles beautifully.

  “Did God really tell you to buy this for me?”

  “He sure did,” I lie. “I’m really thinking about turning around my life and avoiding hell. Giving my life to Jesus and all the rest. I just have to sort through some issues first, but your dedication, the fact that you stand out here three times a week, the strength of your faith is amazing and really won me over.”

  Her eyes open wide and I can tell I’m totally making her day, like she was waiting for some sort of signal from god, some sort of affirmation, and I’m her miracle, so I just keep piling it on, talking about being a changed man, and wanting to live a good life, and spending eternity with her in heaven.

  Inside I start to feel terrible, thinking about how disappointed she’ll be when she sees the news tonight—how crushing that will be for her—and I wonder if her faith will be able to withstand it.

  I think god is just a fairy tale, but I’m really starting to like the fact that Lauren has faith.

  Don’t know why.

  It’s weird.

  A contradiction, maybe.

  Or maybe it’s like wanting little kids to believe in Santa after someone else already ruined it for you, or you just figured out that your parents were Santa after all and the magic of Christmas instantly evaporated. But thinking about my destroying her faith by tricking her and then killing myself really starts to bring me down, until I just can’t lie to her anymore.

  “Life can be really hard, you know. It makes it difficult to believe in god sometimes, but I’m trying—for you, and maybe for me too,” I say, and then I just start to fucking cry. I’m not sure why. Man, I bawl and bawl.

  She hugs me and I clutch her, sob into her neck that smells like vanilla extract baking inside cookies—so fucking wonderful!

  The sad suits and briefcases pass us in droves, but no one even seems to notice us as I drink her up.

  “God works in mysterious ways,” she says, and rubs my back all motherly. “This world is a test. It’s hard. But I will continue to pray for you. We could pray together. You could come to church with me. It would help you. My father will help you too.”

  She’s saying all of these really nice things, trying to comfort me the only way she knows how, and I love just being on someone’s radar so much that I start kissing her neck and then her mouth. Our tongues touch, and she kisses me back for a fraction of a second— Her mouth is so warm and wet and mint-y from the gum she’s chewing and my heart’s pulsing spikes of adrenaline through my veins, which is exciting and animalistic and primal, but maybe not quite what I was expecting, because I thought kissing Lauren would be like the epic kisses in Bogie films, like the string section would kick in and I’d get that swirling feeling Baback’s playing produces, and Lauren would pause to gaze at me and say, “I like that. I’d like more,” just like Bacall says— in that infamous husky voice—to Bogie in The Big Sleep, and when I kissed her glossy battleship-gray lips again, she’d say, “That’s even better,” but instead it’s just the hot sweaty rush of bodies mangling when they maybe shouldn’t even be mingling—and she tries to push me away, but the rush forces me to hold on to her tight, even though I want to let go, even though I should really LET GO!, so she turns her face from my mouth and yells “Stop” in this high-pitched squeal that is the complete antithesis of Bacall’s warm sexy brassy voice and when I keep kissing her cheek and ear, she smashes my chin with the heel of her hand, jolting my brain back to reality and knocking off my Bogart hat in the process.

  I stagger backward and then pick up my fedora.

  The warm rush freezes into a heavy lump in my chest and suddenly I feel so so shitty—like I need to vomit.

  “Is there a problem here?” says this subway rent-a-cop who has magically appeared. He has this dirt moustache that makes him seem about twelve years old. He’s hilarious-looking in his official uniform with the little silver badge. Almost cute. Like a kid wearing a Halloween costume.

  “I’m just delivering a message from god,” I say, and pop my hat back onto my head. I’m acting again, keeping my true feelings repressed—I’m aware of that, but I can’t help it.

  Lauren looks at me like maybe I’m a demon from hell or the Antichrist, and says, “Why did you do that?”

  “What did you do to her?” the rent-a-cop asks, trying to look official and tough.

  “I gave her a cross on a silver chain and tried to tell her I love her—I do love you, Lauren; I really do—then I kissed her passionately.”

  She looks at me with her head all cockeyed and her wet lips parted.

  She’s so confused.

  I’m kind of confused too, because I’m not attracted to Lauren at all anymore and the kiss was a spectacular failure.

  I can tell that some part of her deep inside liked the kissing, because it’s natural for teenage girls to like kissing, but she feels conflicted, like she’s not supposed to like it, that she’s supposed to deny her instincts here, like her religious training bids her, and that’s what’s really eating her up inside.

  Maybe that’s how rapists justify their actions.

  Maybe I’m a monster now.

  Because I can see the thought process happening—it’s written all over her face.

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  I can’t.

  I really can’t.

  I really truly absolutely can’t.

  Why did you do this to me?

  Why did you make me feel this way?

  Why?!?

  Lauren says, “I have to go,” just before she drops her stack of religious pamphlets and runs away.

  I hate myself.

  She literally runs.

  I really fucking hate myself.

  And I don’t have the heart to chase, mostly because I used up whatever courage and strength I had just to kiss her.

  There’s a part of me that still wants to believe the kissing was wonderful.

  Black-and-white Bogie-Bacall perfect.

  Even though it wasn’t.

  My dad used to say that the last
drink of the day, when the work and thinking are over and you’re just about to surrender to unconsciousness, that’s always the best drink regardless of how it tastes.

  Maybe Lauren was my last drink of the day.

  The tracts blow all over the concrete sidewalk like dead leaves in the breeze.

  “You better work on your delivery, Romeo,” the rent-a-cop says. “Now keep moving.”

  “Aye, aye,” I say, and give the kid a military salute, making my body rigid and stiff, karate-chopping my eyebrows. “Good job keeping people with guns away from the subway. You really are a fantastic rent-a-cop.”

  He looks at me and puts a hand on this two-foot club strapped to his belt, probably because they won’t let the kid carry a gun. He makes this evil twisted face, like beating me to death would really make his day. The rent-a-cop actually intimidates me a little, which is ironic, since I’m going to kill myself. But I haven’t shot Asher Beal yet, and death by rent-a-cop is probably even worse than death by übermorons.

  “Here’s me moving on,” I say, and he lets me, because it’s the easiest thing for him to do.

  He probably makes what—eleven-fifty an hour?

  A rent-a-cop’s not exactly going to take a bullet in the line of duty for that type of wage, and who would?

  As I walk away, my backpack feels lighter.

  I’ve delivered all of my presents, so now it’s finally time to kill Asher Beal.

  Let’s get this birthday party started!

  I’m so ready to be done with this life.

  It will be so so beautiful to finally be end-of-the-road done.

  This will be the best birthday present ever; I’m pretty sure of that.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I open my birthday present in the woods behind Asher Beal’s house—feel the familiar cold heaviness of the P-38 in my hand—and then wait for my target[52] to come home.

  I’ve been doing reconnaissance for a few weeks now, so I know that on Thursdays my target arrives home around 5:43 from wrestling practice, and then usually goes into his first-floor bedroom for an hour before dinner.